Review: "Blackbird"

"You didn't raise us to be strong. You just raised us not to bother you with weakness!"

                                                                                    --Anna

"Blackbird" is one of those rare movies that held few surprises for me, but I still embraced every moment I spent with it. 

It's very much an "actors' film," without any real plot other than a bunch of characters getting together, interacting and reacting. It's remade from a Danish film by Billie August (unseen by me), directed by Roger Michell ("Notting Hill") from a script by Christian Torpe. 

The cast is terrific, and it's a movie that's warmhearted but not without considerable tension and pain.

It stars Susan Sarandon, still luminous at 73, as a woman named Lily who is dying. She has some sort of degenerative disease that will eventually leave her unable to walk, talk or even breathe on her own, so she has decided to hurry things along by undertaking physician-assisted suicide, which in her case the doctor also being her husband, Paul (Sam Neill). 

Lily and Paul have let everyone know their plans and have gathered their extended family to their beach house for one last weekend of togetherness and goodbyes. After they leave Sunday evening, she will drink something Paul has prepared for her and let go. It's her (fiercely defended) choice.

Of course, the weekend will not proceed with utter tranquility. There are built-up tensions with their two daughters, well-played by Kate Winslet and Mia Wasikowska, and within their own family units, that will come out and spark arguments and recriminations. 

You can feel the slow-burn buildup to these outbreaks coming a long way off. And yet, strangely, the moments never felt artificial or hurried. They seemed more like the revolutions of the tide, which comes rolling in whether you want it to or not.

Lily is the clear alpha in the family, a woman who doesn't necessarily like to be the center of attention but absolutely insists on being the center of power. Paul seems content to adore her, support her and take a back seat to the interpersonal dynamics. 

Lily has a good heart but often doesn't see how her desire for things to be a certain way can cause them to go astray. She has a tendency to delude herself, insisting things are as she wants them to be rather than the way they really turned out.

Michell starts off shooting mostly from medium distance, slowly bringing the camera closer to the actors' faces as the story goes on. I knew that Winslet was in this movie and kept waiting for her to show up, and I think was 30 minutes in before I realized older daughter Jennifer was her. Somehow her ponytail, owlish glasses and hard, flat American accent had me completely fooled. 

Jennifer has a lot to be thankful for in her life, but instead obsesses with "straightening the picture frames," as someone aptly puts it. She's very critical of everyone, including herself, and can't seem to just sit back and let the sun shine in.

Her husband, Michael (Rainn Wilson), is likeable but diffident, the kind of guy who tends to have his nose buried in a newspaper or book, and most of his conversations with other people have a "did you know?" hook to them. He's not showing off, but this is how he gets around his awkwardness.

Their son, Jonathan (Anson Boon), is about 16 and just starting to spread his wings. He wants to be an actor, but has never even told his parents about it. He often acts as the audience's eyes and ears.

The other daughter, Anna (Wasikowska), is the black sheep of the family. She's had trouble keeping a job or a relationship, and often drops out of communication for long stretches. Anna shows up with her girlfriend, Chris (Bex Taylor-Klaus), in tow, which causes consternation because Jennifer asked that she not be brought. 

Apparently they've broken up and gotten back together several times, and Chris is seen as a destabilizing force on Anna's life. Though we'll see how true that is.

Finally there's Liz (Lindsay Duncan), Lily's lifelong best friend who has been riding along with the family on vacations, get-togethers, and so on for decades. She doesn't have a lot to say or do, but we suspect she will factor into matters more deeply as things go on.

As I say, there isn't really a whole lot of storytelling here. There's the Friday arrivals, Saturday activities followed by a big dinner, and the Sunday dénouement. At first the main conflict is between the sisters, but it migrates around so that virtually every relationships is revealed and tested in some way.

I'll say I pretty much knew everything that was going to occur before it did. (Watch hundreds of movies a year, and you will, too.) But again, the strength of a film like this is not "what happens" but the how and the why.

Sarandon is such a treasure, always interesting to watch even in movies that don't hold much appeal on their own. I liked seeing Winslet in such an emotionally pinched role; we're used to seeing her as women throwing around big emotions. I really took pleasure in Wilson, so identified with his iconic character from "The Office," getting a chance to show his dramatic chops.

Movies like "Blackbird" are not about big surprises, but how the patterns of life that become stable and familiar are vulnerable to disruption and being upended -- and that's not a bad thing. At the every end of her life, Lily knows who she is and what her life has been about, and wants to say goodbye on her own terms. So do we all.

My wife asked me what movie I was about to review and I said it was a comedy about the origins of the "Punch & Judy" puppet show that makes a pun out of wife-beating. Within the first 20 minutes of "Judy & Punch," Punch drunkenly kills their baby and beats Judy to death, stashing her body in the forest.

So yes, we must add the "black" prefix to the comedy designation -- as in the blackest of black comedies.

Personally I'd call this Australian film from writer/director Mirrah Foulkes more of a cautionary satire than a comedy. Foulkes is a veteran actress taking her first turn behind the camera, and it's a bracing one that hopefully will lead to more.

Set in Victorian times, the story presupposes that the Punch show is the brainchild of one man, a self-glorified puppeteer played by Damon Herriman. (From what I can learn, the actual tale sprung from Italy and was widely imitated throughout Britain and France.) He's a formerly famous performer from "the Big Smoke," aka London, who has settled in the quaint hamlet of Seaside, named without any relation to proximity to a body of water.

Punch has a seemingly benign marriage to Judy (Mia Wasikowska), his partner in the puppet show and also acts as the emcee/barker beforehand, rattling pennies into an urn to support their meager existence. The marionettes are carved to look exactly like Judy and Punch, which is disturbing since they spend the whole act beating the hell out of each other.

How come Judy never wins? asks one young observer... a weighty question indeed.

Other than puppets, the main form of entertainment in Seaside appears to be hanging, drowning and pummeling witches. They have a regular "Stoning Day" that sends everyone into a high frenzy, the festivities led by the toadying Mr. Frankly (Tom Budge).

One senses that Stoning Day will always occur even if no apparent witches have presented themselves.

Punch is revered as the local celebrity -- even getting first throw on Stoning Day -- but longs for a return to a bigger stage. They have a baby girl and an elderly couple as servants (Brenda Palmer and Terry Norris), living in the dilapidated mansion where Judy grew up.

He also has a fondness for the drink, leading to the unpleasantness mentioned at the start of this review. Since Wasikowska is the star, I don't think I'm too deep into spoilerland by saying her death is short-lived. She recovers in a heretic's camp populated by uppity women, odd children and other outcasts who might otherwise find themselves in high demand on Stoning Day.

Among them is Dr. Goodtime (Gillian Jones), formerly the town medicine woman, who advises Judy to leave Seaside and its bad memories behind her.

Punch, being Punch, has continued his habit of spectacularly selfish ways, replacing Judy with one of his local admirers (Kiruna Stamell) and chalking up his family's disappearance to devil-worshipers. Benedict Hardie plays Derrick, the untested but good-hearted constable caught in the middle of all this.

The interesting thing about Punch is that, despite all his detestable acts, when he's finally cornered still insists that he's a good man. I think his delusion rests in the belief that because he is talented and (in this small corner of the world) important, then he must therefore have value. He is good because of who he is, not because of what he does.

This sort of thinking seems a virus of the mind very catching these days, methinks.

Wasikowska is stolid and true and a little dull, to be blunt. She's one of those actresses who gets cast because she projects in image of sweet innocence, though I don't think she's particularly adept at projecting her character's inner workings.

Still, this is a good tale sharply told. I really enjoyed the music by François Tétaz, a mix of orchestral and electronica themes that seems to positively groan with dark mirth. Similarly, the photography, costumes and sets are first-rate for a low-budget movie.

Men like Punch have always had the upper hand in life -- in his case, quite literally -- but sooner or later the controlling strings will be cut.

Video review: "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

I guess I’m just Mr. Contrarian. I despised 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” starring Johnny Depp as a decidedly off-kilter Mad Hatter. But the sequel is a charming romp that uses Lewis Carroll’s second novel as a mere jumping-off point for its own series of crazy, colorful adventures.

Of course, the first movie was a huge hit and the second died a quick death at the box office. Apparently, the majority of moviegoers like what I hate and hate what I like.

(Considering that for my epitaph.)

Perhaps give “Alice Through the Looking Glass” a chance on video, and maybe we’ll find we’re not so far apart after all.

This story (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) digs deeper into the Hatter’s past, using a kooky time-traveling device to see how he became so delightfully dinghy. Three years after the events in the last movie, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Underland to find Hatter has taken deathly ill.

In a delirium -- I know, hard to tell the difference with this one -- Hatter insists that his family, long thought killed by the Jaberwocky, is somehow alive and waiting for him. They track down Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen) and steal his Chronosphere to jump back to years past.

Of course, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), she of the outsized head and aggressiveness, returns to muck up their quest. Anne Hathaway also shows up as the White Queen, and we find out a little more about the sisters’ long-ago divergence.

James Bobin, taking over the directing chair from Tim Burton, keeps the story more or less on an even keel. It turns out that when you have characters and creatures straight out of pure imagination, it helps to arrange them in a methodical way, rather than splaying them out randomly as the previous film did.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Bonus features are quite good, though you’ll have to buy the Blu-ray version to get the vast majority of them. The DVD comes only with one featurette about the making of the costumes.

The Blu-ray includes several more making-of mini-documenatires, the music video for “Just Like Fire” with P!nk, side-by-side comparisons of raw footage and final scenes, profiles of minor characters, deleted scenes and a feature-length commentary track with Bobin.

Movie:

Extras: 

Review: "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

I quite loathed 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” but here’s a pretty penny.

This sequel with only a tertiary connection to Lewis Carroll’s second Alice novel manages the rare feat of significantly outshining its predecessor. If the first film was “an exercise in cynical regurgitation,” to quote some meanie critic (*ahem*), then this movie gleefully tosses the books aside for its own freewheeling cogitation on the characters and dizzying world Carroll created.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is, dare I say, an exercise in audacious originality.

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton is back while director Tim Burton is not, and it pains me to say that his shifting to a producer role is undoubtedly for the best. Burton has worked with star Johnny Depp so much that he seems to have lost the ability to reign in the actor’s kookiest impulses, ceding the storytelling process to his latest costume-and-accent fetish.

In the last movie, Depp’s Mad Hatter character was a discombobulated mashup of emotions and loony behavior, a coy nincompoop one moment and a sword-wielding war machine the next. Even nonsense needs a consistent sensibility.

James Bobin, an accomplished television writer/director with only one other feature film to his credit (“Muppets Most Wanted”), gets the call and wisely keeps the Hatter in check.

Set three years after the last movie, “Glass” finds Alice (Mia Wasikowska) the captain of her late father’s shop “Wonder,” just returned from a long excursion to the Far East. Alas, upon sailing home to London she finds the family fortune raided by the local lord, whose marital advances she rejected before her deep dive down the rabbit hole into Underland.

Alice rejects the insistence of her mother (Lindsay Duncan) that she must sell the ship and give up her adventures. “I want to believe I can do as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” she stamps.

After stepping through a looking-glass portal, she finds herself returned to Underland just as Hatter has taken ill. He believes that his family, whom he long believed killed by the Jaberwocky serpent at the behest of the evil Red Queen, is waiting to be found. Alice must travel through time to save them.

The only way to do this is by stealing the Chronosphere from Time himself, here represented by Sacha Baron Cohen as a stern-yet-comical figure who oversees the great clock controlling the universe – both Underland and our world. “You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it,” he warns.

Thus sets off a jaunty trip through multiple time frames of Underland, so we get to visit with Hatter, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and their critter friends when they were younger, and then as pups. I should mention that the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), with her outsized head and matching rage, returns as well, wooing Time to get her own hands on the Chronosphere.

As before, this is a CGI-heavy romp of bright colors and wondrous backgrounds, somewhere between medieval and Dickensian in setting, pure whimsy in tone. We learn a little more about Hatter – including his real name, Tarrant Hightopp – though not the exact origin of his… specialness.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is an unexpected surprise: a movie you thought you were going to hate that turns out to be quite a gem.

Review: "Crimson Peak"

This goofy, gothic horror/romance from Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labrynth") is positively dripping in bloody mood, but forgot to pack the intrigue. It's a ghost tale in which the supernatural twist is spelled out for us from the very start. When the mystery is gone, so goes the thrill.

If that weren't bad enough, the evil twin siblings actually stand around and discuss their nefarious plans to the audience and, eventually, even the intended victim herself, who the brother has married for her money and then, tragically, actually fallen in love with.

We should kill her now, sister urges. Let's wait a while longer, he cautions, heart fluttering.

My God, people, do I really need to sit here and tell you that having characters blurt exactly what they're going to do and how they're going to do it tends to make a movie less, y'know, good? That when the heroine of the picture is the only one who's not clued in to what's happening, the audience will resent her for her stupidity rather than root for her resourcefulness?

Del Toro, who co-wrote the script with Matthew Robbins, is a feast-or-famine director whose stuff I've either loved ("Pacific Rim") or loathed ("Mimic"). He's a visionary filmmaker who sometimes fumbles with the ABC's of storytelling.

There was some consternation when the trailer for this highly anticipated movie seemed to reveal too much of the plot. That ire seems hilarious now; the film gives away so much of itself from the very outset that there's nothing left to tease. It's like a stripper who walks out onstage and drops all her clothes in a heap at once right after the song's started.

Mia Wasikowska plays Edith, an aspiring writer and proto-feminist in 1901 Buffalo. Dad (Jim Beaver) is a wealthy real estate guy who built himself up; mother is long dead of cholera, but occasionally turns up as a smoking, blackened corpse to warn her daughter to stay away from Crimson Peak.

(The creepy effects for the ghosts ae one of the few things about the movie that's special.)

In waltzes Baronet Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), the charming son of an old British house fallen low. He and his steely sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), who practically hisses at the local gentry, are in town to raise some grub to revive the family mining operation. In short order Edith is bedazzled and wedded, but not bedded.

The Sharpes bring her back to the family manse, Allerdale Hall, which is literally sinking into the earth. It seems there's a very rare ore that's blood red and oozes up from under the building foundation, staining the ground as Thomas labors on a machine to harvest it.

Don't be worried about the walls that bleed or the constant groaning sounds produced by the wind, Lucille reassures, and Edith, the ninny, goes along with it. Even when she starts to see more corpses crawling up out of the mansion's rotting floorboards, her devotion to a man she met like three weeks earlier manages to overcome her doubts.

Things go on from there, which I won't reveal because I don't want to rob you of the satisfaction of figuring it all out for yourself 15 minutes into the movie.

"Crimson Peak" is an overstuffed movie of poofy dresses and poofy hair hiding airheaded characters who tell you what they're about so you don't have to overtax your brain. What a bloody nightmare.

Video review: "Albert Nobbs"

Albert Nobbs is more a parable than a person, and "Albert Nobbs" plays out more closely to a fable than an authentic tale. "Albert Nobbs" is the classic example of a terrific premise for a movie that doesn't follow through. Glenn Close, in an Oscar-nominated turn, plays a woman living in 19th century Ireland who's been passing herself off as a manservant. After decades of cultivating a humble, inconspicuous exterior, Albert seems to have developed no real identify of his own. (I'll use male pronouns, since that's how Albert thinks of himself.) Seemingly uninterested in sex, his only real desires are for security and stability. After a chance meeting with another female living as a man (Janet McTeer, in a hefty performance that got its own nod from the Academy), Albert latches onto the idea of using his savings to open a small tobacco shop. He even wants to marry Helen (Mia Wasikowska), a callow young co-worker, and install her as a sort of business partner and life companion. The movie faces a couple of problems. Despite some impressive wigs and makeup, the transformation of the women into men isn't entirely convincing. It's hard to buy that anyone wouldn't take one look at Albert realize he's in disguise. McTeer, wearing obvious shoulder pads, is even more obvious. The other challenge is that Albert remains a total cipher even after the credits have rolled. He seems not so much masculine or feminine as sexless. The character also comes across as being not very bright. Pair that with his stubbornly mysterious motivations, and the intrigue surrounding this little figure soon fades. Special features, which are a little on the scanty side, are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions. They consist of a handful of deleted scenes, and a feature-length commentary track by Close -- who also co-wrote the screenplay -- and director Rodrigo Garcia. The pairing is pleasant; I've always felt the best commentaries are achieved when filmmakers and cast members collaborate on them. Please note, "Albert Nobbs" will be released on video May 15. Movie: B-minus Extras: B-minus

Review: "Albert Nobbs"

Albert Nobbs is more a parable than a person, and "Albert Nobbs" plays out more closely to a fable than an authentic tale.

Glenn Close plays the title character, a woman who has been posing as a male servant for so long in 1800s Ireland that she can't really even remember another existence. Albert (I'll refer to him as he from now on, since that's how he regards himself) is utterly subservient, deliberately nondescript and indeed seems to have no inner core to hide.

He's been playing an exterior role so long, it has become the entirety of the core inside.

It's a remarkable (and Oscar-nominated) performance by Close, who also co-wrote the screenplay with John Banville and Gabriella Prekop, based on a short story by George Moore. She manages to show us an absolutely flawless facade -- the tiny voice, the prim mannerisms, the unflappable reserve.

Physically, Close has always possessed a somewhat androgynous beauty (undiminished as she nears her 65th birthday). But even with some splendid wigs and facial prosthetics, the look isn't entirely persuasive. Albert's appearance takes on a certain elvish bent, seeming not so much masculine as entirely sexless.

As for sex, the thought seems not to have occurred to Albert. His only spare thoughts are to money: he's been meticulously saving his wages and tips in order to buy a business -- perhaps a tobacco shop, he muses. Never mind that he doesn't even know how to roll a cigarette.

Then something startling happens: Albert is forced to share his bed with a easygoing house painter who has come to spiff up the upscale but dowdy hotel where he lives and works. Albert is astonished to discover that this man, Hubert Page (Janet McTeer), is also passing himself off as a man. What's more, Hubert has even taken a wife.

Soon Albert becomes obsessed with the notion of doing the same -- not for any sexual reason, but because the idea of hearth and home, with a pleasant girl working the counter at the tobacco shop, appeals to his nature. After a lifetime of fear at his secret being discovered, what Albert craves most is security.
(It seems not to have occurred to him to play it backwards, taking a husband and becoming the girl behind the counter.)

For capricious and naive reasons, Albert focuses his attentions on Helen (Mia Wasikowska), the flirty young maid at his hotel. Alas, she's fallen in with a bad sort named Joe (Aaron Johnson), who dreams of liberty in America. Joe catches the whiff of money about Albert, and sets Helen to leading Albert on in hopes of cracking his skinflint veneer.

Director Rodrigo Garcia elicits consistently wonderful performances from his cast, which also features Pauline Collins as the fussy but domineering owner of the hotel, Brenda Fricker as a cook who's wiser than she looks, and Brendan Gleeson as the boozy doctor who seems to be the hotel's permanent resident.

Yet "Albert Nobbs" can't shake the tinge of feeling counterfeit. Albert is trapped in a maze of his own construction, one he could cast off his narrow shoulders at any time he wished. The film demonstrates this itself, when Hubert and Albert put on dresses and try a day living as women. The result is perhaps the only true moment of unchecked joy in Albert's life.

As for the central love triangle, it's difficult to get caught up in since it contains no actual love. Helen obviously holds scant affection for Albert, Joe adores only money and freedom and Albert regards love the way a whale might behold an elephant it spies upon the shore: intriguing, but incompatible.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "The Kids Are All Right"

Here's a well-drawn movie about two lesbians raising a pair of teenagers, but it's not a "gay" film.

By that, I mean that the homosexuality of Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) is not the central motif of director/co-writer Lisa Cholodenko's comedy/drama, "The Kids Are All Right." It's a story about a family, a non-traditional one to be sure, but the challenges they face are similar to those experienced by the folks in a Norman Rockwell portrait.

The main dynamic is about how Nic and Jules discover fissures in their relationship, even though they've been together 20-odd years and have raised two great kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). The catalyst for this discover is the arrival of Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a leather-jacketed free spirit who provided the anonymous donor sperm for the children.

Joni tracks down Paul, who gets a kick out of the idea of being somebody's dad. He's a bohemian type who emotionally is a renter, not a buyer -- he just visits in other people's lives.

Jules finds herself drawn to him, setting up a showdown that threatens to split the entire family apart.

Sneakily smart, "Kids" gently pokes fun at a whole slew of social mores and character flaws. At first, the uptight Nic is the main target, but eventually we learn that none of these people are without blemishes.

Extra features, which are the same for DVD and Blu-ray versions, are decent without impressing.

Three featurette are rather disappointing in their brevity, falling more into the realm of Web-friendly video teasers than true glimpses behind the production.

One is about how Cholodenko came to work with co-writer Stuart Blumberg, which clocks in at just over two minutes. The big takeaway there is that Blumberg himself was a sperm donor back in college.

A making-of doc runs three minutes, and another about casting the film is just over four minutes long.

The real centerpiece is a feature-length commentary track by Cholodenko. It's moderately insightful, though I'm of the firm opinion that tag-teaming two or more people makes for livelier banter.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "The Kids Are All Right"

"The Kids Are All Right" is a movie about families. In this case, a family with two lesbians, but that's not what director Lisa Cholodenko's delightful comedy/drama is about. Rather, it uses the particular circumstances of a clan with two women at the head of the household to explore how people can grow apart, even while they still love each other.

The thing that stands out about Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) is not that they're gay, but how spectacularly normal they are. They're middle-aged, been together since their 20s, have a couple of teen kids: Joni (Mia Wasikowska), 18, whip-smart and about to go off to college, and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), 15 and still figuring himself out. That often comes with having a name like Laser.

Nic is a doctor, precise and comfortable with routine, while Jules is a bit of a dreamer and drifter, career-wise. She studied to be an architect, tried a few jobs that didn't take, took a decade or so off to manage the kids, and is now looking to start a landscaping business.

Nic is used to being in charge at work, and we see how that's inexorably carried over to home life. Jules isn't content with just being someone's housewife, and subtly rebels with little digs about Nic's (over)fondness for wine and tendency to micro-manage.

Their existence gets turned inside out with the unexpected arrival of Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the anonymous sperm donor who fathered both Joni and Laser. Laser wants to find out who is dad is, but gets Joni to call the lab since he isn't yet of age.

In a quirk, Joni ends up taking an immediate shine to Paul, while Laser feigns profound indifference. Paul is in his late 30s, rides a motorcycle, and runs a bohemian little restaurant featuring food from his organic farm. Played by Mark Ruffalo in ultra-cool mode, Paul's the lovable rebel every teen would die to have as their father.

But the integration of Paul into this alternative family isn't destined to be smooth. Nic takes one look at his scruffy leather jacket and listens to his story about dropping out of college, and decides Paul isn't the best role model for the kids. Laser could use a father figure, but clearly wants to have Paul jump through a few hoops to audition for the job.

Cholodenko, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stuart Blumberg, veers the tone of the film around wildly but not unintentionally. At first, I got the sense she was having some fun with the lesbian couple's bourgeois ways and New Age-y talk: "I know I haven't been my highest self." "We wonder if he's the type of person who's going to help you grow."

And early on, it sure seems as if Nic is being set up to be the fall guy. Her brittle uptightness and the way she benevolently dominates Jules is meant to be off-putting for the audience. When she goes to Defcon 2 over Paul giving Joni a ride on his motorcycle -- with a helmet, slowly -- it sets off a full-blown conflict about not letting her girl become her own woman.

But through careful observation, and a crisis that threatens to drive the family apart, the film helps us realize that Paul, while undeniably charismatic with his twinkly pirate smile, isn't ready for the responsibility of a family suddenly foisted upon him.

Paul thinks he is; he's so skilled at being a charmer, he even fools himself.

Nic has it nailed when she dubs Paul an interloper: He's somebody who merely visits in people's lives -- including his own.

Bening and Moore are their usual selves, giving performances with presence and dimension. We don't for a second question the idea that they're longtime companions and lovers, people who have built a life together and are shaken by the cracks revealed in the foundation.

"The Kids Are All Right" starts out being a movie about the kids, and slowly pans over so the relationship of their parents becomes the main focus. It's a finely-drawn, rich examination of love and disaffection, and how they can exist side-by-side.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Alice in Wonderland"

The worst thing about sitting through "Alice in Wonderland" is the dawning realization that director Tim Burton, once one of the most original voices in Hollywood, has become king of the crappy remakes.

The movie-going public simply did not need a new version of "Planet of the Apes" or "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and the same goes for "Alice."

Festooned with computer-generated critters and the now-obligatory kooky Johnny Depp performance, "Alice" is essentially a sequel to the original Lewis Carroll books. Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now a willful teen, refuses an arranged marriage to a wealthy suitor for a return trip to Wonderland.

It seems in her absence the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, her head ballooned by CG puffery) has usurped the throne of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and is lopping off heads at a record pace.

Depp plays the Mad Hatter, bit player in the Carroll books but now Alice's best friend/muse. It's a performance steeped in its own weird sauce, a spray of sibilant nonsense and rousing Braveheart-esque speeches.

In the unholy and wholly unnecessary matrimony between Tim Burton and "Alice," it's clear that originality doesn't live here anymore.

The film is available as a single DVD or a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Video extras are OK for the DVD version, and expand considerably with Blu-ray.

The DVD includes a making-of documentary, a featurette about the film's visual effects, and another about how Depp constructed his latest crazy character -- including digitally enhancing his eyes so that he resembled Elijah Wood in drag queen makeup.

In addition, the Blu-ray has featurettes on creating the Red Queen, the White Queen, musical score, sets, stunts and even the Hatter's Futterwhacken Dance.

For myself, I wish Tim Burton would kick all the big-money productions and computer imagery to the curb, and concentrate on small, clever concoctions of his own recipe. These days it feels like he's baking someone else's cakes.

Movie: 1.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Alice in Wonderland"

Why?

That's my one-word review of Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland." Why does this movie exist? Does it add anything to the Lewis Carroll stories? Does it have a purpose for being beyond dollars-and-cents rationalizing? If it had never been made, would the cinematic world be poorer for it?

I've been a fan of director Tim Burton's comically twisted sensibilities for a long time, but lately he's in a rut. Rather than pursuing original stories ("Edward Scissorhands") or loopy take-offs on reality ("Ed Wood"), he's tackling big-budget revivals of well-known intellectual properties -- "Sweeney Todd," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Planet of the Apes."

Burton's gone from being one of the most vibrant, freshest voices in Hollywood to the king of the remakes. His distinctive style has been packaged and co-opted. You can practically hear the moneymen plotting:

"Hey, no one's made an 'Alice' movie in awhile, let's do it up with a lot of CG for the animals and add in some battle scenes for the teens and slather on some of that Tim Burton kookiness. And we'll get Johnny Depp to do one of his over-the-top nutty characters."

Speaking of which: The eclectic voices that call out to Depp have often aimed true -- his Keith-Richards-meets-Pepe-Le-Pew take on Captain Jack Sparrow made the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" a delectable mash-up of spectacle and spontaneity. But it had gotten old by the second go-round, and his Michael Jackson-inspired Willy Wonka was just strange for the sake of strangeness.

Ditto for his Mad Hatter, who seems to put on his personalities like he does his blue-and-pink makeup. One minute Hatter, as he's nicknamed, is speaking in a rambling, lisping spray of non-sequitors ("How is a raven like a writing desk?"), and then he switches into a strident Scottish brogue.

By the end of the film, he even gets a big ol' Braveheart sword to complete the strange ensemble.

The Hatter, of course, was only a minor player in the original novel by Lewis Carroll, but here he's elevated to sidekick/muse for Alice (Mia Wasikowska).

Carroll actually wrote two Alice books, and most movie versions have simply crammed together characters and story elements from each. This new film (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) goes one further, by essentially positing itself as a sequel.

Alice is now 19 and about to be married off to a haughty young lord, and is plagued by dreams about white rabbits and red queens. Little does she realize these are actually memories from her childhood visit to Wonderland (or Underland, as the natives insist is the correct name).

A quick dash down the rabbit hole, and a few rapid changes in size later, Alice stumbles upon the White Rabbit, Dormouse, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Blue Caterpillar. It seems in her absence the Red Queen has usurped the crown of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and is ordering the lopping off of heads at a prodigious rate.

Computer imagery is incorporated into many of the characters. The animals are all CG, but even the Red Queen (played by Helena Bonham Carter) has her head swelled to watermelon proportions. (Depp's eyes are similarly super-sized.)

Alice sets off on a search for the Vorpal Blade, guarded by a Bandersnatch, to be used against the fearsome serpent Jabberwocky at the climactic battle on Frabjous Day -- all bits, by the way, contained in Carroll's nonsense poetry. Oh, and Hatter will celebrate by doing his Futterwhacken dance.

Considered apart, some of these ornaments are amusing enough in their own right. But taken together, Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is an exercise in cynical regurgitation.

1.5 stars