Reeling Backward: "Good Will Hunting" (1997)

One of my best indications of how well a film truly impacted me is how much of it stays with me after many years. I only saw "Good Will Hunting" a single time when it came out 17 years ago. But my recall of its characters, specific passages of dialogue and visual cues has remained startlingly clear.

Perhaps that's because it became a pop culture touchstone, launching the careers of Matt Damon and Paul Affleck, solidifying those of Robin Williams and Gus Van Sant -- and inspiring a thousand conspiracy theories about the true authorship of its Oscar-winning script.

My favorite of these is a "Family Guy" riff in which a young Damon sits at a typewriting musing on the result of many months of hard work, and a lounging, pot-smoking Affleck cheekily insists he be given a writing credit, too. More insidious was the one that screenwriting legend William Goldman had heavily doctored the script, or even made it up out of whole cloth. (Goldman, along with everyone involved, has denied this, and I believe them.)

Watching it for the second time so many years later, I'm struck what a truly great rookie screenplay it is -- still a bit rough around the edges, and one of the few movies you can say could stand to be a little longer. But as a piece of cinematic intelligence, it proved the wunderkinds -- both still in their mid-20s when the film was made -- knew a lot about storytelling.

Perhaps my favorite part of the script is when one of the characters points out the central conceit of Will Hunting's story. Namely that, as a blue-collar math genius working as a janitor at MIT, anonymously solving complex theorems on chalkboards in the dead of night, Will was trying to be discovered by the eggheads and offered a route out of his life of poverty and abuse. Even though he spends the entire movie hurling insults at anyone who tries to get close to him, and pledges eternal allegiance with his two-fisted Southie (South Boston) roots.

The guy who has this insight is, of course, Robin Williams, playing Sean Maguire, a little-heralded psychologist who takes on the court-ordered therapy of Will after five higher-profile head shrinkers demure in the wake of the patient's invective. The heart of the movie is the gentle aura of trust and love that slowly grows between these two characters -- even more so than that between Will and Skylar (Minnie Driver), a British pre-med student about to graduate Harvard.

Sean is a fellow Southie, who was college roommates with Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård), the brilliant and renowned MIT math professor -- did he mention his Fields Medal? -- who "discovers" Will's genius. The former roomies share a natural affinity but also resent each other, as Gerry feels Sean allowed himself to be tied down by domestic concerns and a lack of ambition, resulting in his present (as he sees it) career mediocrity, teaching at tiny Bunker Hill Community College. Sean, naturally, is inclined to tell him to go eff himself.

The good doctor wears drab sweater-jackets, an indifferent and unflattering hairstyle, and seems barely connected to the life he's living. As we see in a brief classroom scene, he isn't even a passionate (or very good) teacher. We soon learn his beloved wife died two years earlier, and he's been afraid to "put some skin in the game" since then. He actually stopped treating patients years ago during his wife's long decline from cancer, but agrees to see Will as a favor to Gerry.

Their first session is less than auspicious. Will does a better job of psychoanalyzing Sean than vice-versa, perusing his shabby office furnishings, especially a glum painting Sean made, and predicting that he's one step away from cutting off his ear, Van Gogh-like. Sean doesn't necessarily disagree with the diagnosis, but takes affront when the lad edges up to insulting his wife, and clamps his hand around Will's throat, threatening memorably to "end" him. Talk about a doctor/patient conflict of interest.

It's an incredibly vulnerable performance by Williams, who deservedly won an Oscar for the role. I think almost any other actor, even every good ones, would have been tempted to try to render the character tougher, stronger, more proactive. Among its many other attributes, "Good Will Hunting" stands now as a monument to what a beautiful, beautiful man Robin Williams was.

As Chuckie, Will's unwavering best friend, Affleck did not get nominated for a supporting actor Oscar -- doubtless the studio didn't want him competing against Williams -- but he should have. It's one of those tough-guy roles in which the character's soft heart and grace only slightly leak out between the cracks of his hard-bitten veneer. He gets to deliver a great speech about waking up one day and being 50, and if he still sees Will busting his hump at construction or janitorial work, he'll murder him despite his fierce love.

Casey Affleck and Cole Hauser also have small but distinct roles as other members of Will and Chuckie's crew. Casey's character, Morgan, is the cutup who seemingly can't hold onto a job for more than two hours, or resist masturbating for the same span of time. Possibly these are connected.

I love how they always ride in the exact same spots in Chuckie's car, a rusting land yacht of indeterminate 1970s Detroit vintage. Their last moment in the film is great: going to pick up Will, Chuckie returns with a smile after Will has finally taken his advice to vamoose out of town. Without a word, Morgan gleefully cruises around from his back seat to claim Will's place in the shotgun position. The low man on this totem pole of declarative masculinity, Morgan is thrilled at a chance to move up, and Chuckie, magnanimous, accedes to the new configuration. Life will go on.

Like other films that deal with math geniuses, especially mathematics ones -- "A Beautiful Mind," "The Theory of Everything" -- "Good Will Hunting" wisely stays away from the specifics of the discipline. The equations on the boards are surely gibberish to almost everyone watching the film, so Van Sant focuses on the power these hieroglyphics have over the characters, rather than the nomenclature and what they really mean. Would the movie be helped by having a character droning an explanation of the basics of chaos math or high order differential equations? I think not.

Films tend to like to introduce characters who are proclaimed as geniuses, and then proceed to have them do very dumb things. "Good Will Hunting" never makes that mistake, careful to depict how Will is always intellectually a few steps ahead of everyone else, while vividly showing us how emotionally stunted he is. He's repeatedly referred to as "the boy," something helped by Damon's foppy, quintessentially 1990s haircut.

A few amateurish moments aside -- Bill Plimpton as a very Plimpton-esque therapist Will ferrets out as  unknowingly gay after two minutes; Chuckie posing as Will at a job interview so he can scam the suits out of $73 in cash as a "retainer" -- "Good Will Hunting" shines as one of the strongest original stories of the 1990s. Good on ya, boys.

Review: "Lee Daniels' The Butler"

What could have been a searing portrait of race relations in America seen through the eyes of a longtime White House butler instead becomes something like a cheap "Forrest Gump" knockoff.

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" is loosely based on the life of real White House butler Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents from 1952 to 1986. He was a witness to the tumultuous events of the mid-20th century, from school integration to the civil rights upheaval and Vietnam.

Director Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong, who based the movie on a Washington Post article by Wil Haygood, use this as a basis for the completely fictionalized persona of Cecil Gaines, played by Forest Whitaker. While it starts out as a strong character portrait, it soon morphs into a hard-to-believe sequence of events in which either Cecil or his son is present, Zelig-like, at every single pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.

(And yes, the official title is "Lee Daniels' The Butler" -- the studio even sent out a stern reminder to that effect. Personally I think including the name of a director or author in the title makes them seem incredibly insecure.)

Even worse was the choice to cast well-known actors as the presidents Cecil served. Most of the time they bear not a whit of physical resemblance to the Oval Office occupant they're supposed to represent, and their attempts to mimic their speech or mannerisms fall short. Thus, Robin Williams' Eisenhower seems pinched and feisty, while John Cusack as Nixon (!!) has an itchy, sad quality.

Liev Schreiber does an amusing through pretty standard LBJ parody, and James Marsden adds a New England warp to his vowels as Kennedy. Alan Rickman's Reagan is probably the best of the lot, capturing the Gipper's unseen warmth. Casting Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan seems like some sort of cruel in-joke, especially when she invites Cecil and his wife to attend a state dinner as their guests just so (it's implied) there will be some diversity in the room.

The main problem with the churning of administrations is none of them hang around long enough to make any substantial impression, so these appearances end up falling just north of cameos. One part where Cecil attends to Jackie Kennedy after the assassination, her clothes still stained with JFK's blood, is a cheap and false moment.

The movie is at its best when it peers at the relationship between Cecil, his often-troublesome marriage to his boozy wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), his children and his co-workers. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the prankster head butler, and Lenny Kravitz is the more sedate wingman. The scenes where the White House staff hang out in the kitchen and back areas are lively and insightful, contributing to an Upstars/Downstairs vibe.

I enjoyed the section where Cecil talks about the two faces of the black house servant. You wear one face that is your own at home and among friends, but when white folks are around you must be non-threatening, indeed a non-entity -- "the room should feel empty when you are in it," Cecil learns.

He even manages to land his White House gig through strident obsequiousness. When a white manager suggests him to the black head butler, the latter takes affront -- and Cecil sides with him, saying he's right to want to hand-pick his own staff. Impressed with the way Cecil can disappear inside himself, he hires him on the spot, commenting that he'll "be a good house n*gger."

The part where Cecil tangles with his oldest son Louis (David Oyelowo) over his evolution into a civil rights activist grows increasingly far-fetched. Louis manages to be at the forefront of virtually every iconic scene from the equal rights movement -- getting beat up at a diner sit-in, having police dogs and firehouses trained on him, being nearly burned alive on a torched Freedom Rider bus, even seguing into the nascent Black Panther movement.

Curiously, the moment when the civil rights era arrives on Cecil's doorstep, the 1963 march on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, is not represented.

I think this ambitious film would have been better off as a rumination on the different paths African-Americans have taken toward equality and respect -- the way of the harsh revolutionary vs. the quiet insider. Instead, its story and emotions wander all over the map of the black experience, never finding a home.

Reeling Backward: "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (1988)

As a confirmed Terry Gilliam fan, I'm always discovering new things in his movies every time I see them. His films are such dense cauldrons of imagination, it's easy to miss all the ingredients he puts into every strange (but usually wonderful) brew.

For instance, after seeing "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" for the first time in many years, I learned that Sally Salt, the young girl who accompanies the baron on the aforementioned adventures, was played by a wee Sarah Polley.

Polley would go on to become a well-regarded queen of indie films, along with the occasional mainstream one (like last summer's "Splice") and directing "Away from Her" (which is a lovely film, but as I've pointed out before, the story of a woman with Alzheimer's growing distant from her husband should properly have been titled, "Away from Him").

"Munchausen" was regarded as a special-effects extravaganza when it first came out (barely -- in a dispute over the changing of studio regimes, the film was only released on 117 screens). More than 20 years on, the effects already look a bit dated, but I think this only adds to the film's antiquated charm.

Like many of Gilliam's cerebral, impish films, "Munchausen" toes the line between rationality and fantasy, gleefully incorporating both into the same story. Trying to describe a Gilliam narrative is like trying to catch the amorphous tail of a passing zephyr.

The story is set in the 1700s -- "The Age of Reason," an opening title helpfully informs us. In this case, monarchs and politicians enable a 30-year-long war governed by rules and laws that only serve to prolong the suffering. Because it's Wednesday, the soldiers of an (unnamed) European city are compelled not to fight back against the Turks laying siege. The sultan and the European leader (Jonathan Pryce) argue about whose turn it is to surrender

The Pryce character, The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson, orders one of his soldiers (a cameo by Sting) beheaded for heroism, since his extraordinary actions will make the other soldiers feel bad about themselves. It's a mindset that twists rationality into a trap that further debases humanity.

Into this carefully ordered madness steps the Baron, played by John Neville in an underrated performance of wit and bravado. Neville had mostly been known as a stage and television actor until then; Gilliam casting him in the lead role while in his early 60s rejuvenated his film career.

Based on a real historical figure known for exaggerating his exploits, Baron von Munchausen is a fantastic liar who claims to be the greatest truth-teller the world has ever known. He's an emissary of imagination, urging those around him to abandon their reasoned thoughts -- even if but for a little while -- and let their minds wander.

Aged and decrepit, the baron stumbles into a theater troupe performing the story of his life and interrupts the play, howling at the inaccuracies. He proceeds to tell the real story ... or at least the one he has just made up.

It's interesting that the story, by Gilliam and longtime collaborator Charles McKeown, is essentially one long attempt to gather up the Baron's old team. The actual battle with the Turks is barely more than a coda.

There's Gustavus (Jack Purvis), a dwarf -- Gilliam's fondness for Little People is evident in the fact he always includes at least one in his movies -- with extraordinary hearing, and lungs so powerful he can blow down a regiment of enemies at a gust. Albrecht (Winston Dennis) is huge and strong, but secretly yearns to be subservient and dainty.

Berthold (Eric Idle) can run halfway across the world in an hour -- his legs are so powerful, he must wear a ball and chain on each lest he take off like a shot. And Adolphus (McKeown) is the greatest marksman in the world.

Sally is the daughter of the theater troupe director, who stows away on the baron's air balloon. As is often the case in Gilliam films, the child represents the innocent nature of mankind, not yet weighed down by rationality and workaday concerns.

The various sequences veer wildly in tone and look. There's the strange sliding cityscape of the kingdom of the moon, where the king and queen seem to be the only occupants, and whose heads tend to come unstuck from their bodies. The head of the king (Robin Williams) can't stand his body, being forced to endure crass things like flatulence and orgasms, but is flummoxed when he gets an itch on his nose.

One of the most memorable sequences is when they land in the underworld of the god Vulcan (Oliver Reed), a petulant ogre dealing with labor problems from the cyclops union. An 18-year-old Uma Thurman, in one of her first screen roles, plays Venus, emerging nude from her clam shell in a stunning, indelible moment that blends mythology, lust and bon vivant romance.

I really enjoy how the Baron ages back and forth according to how well the adventure is faring -- after arriving on the moon, he is rejuvenated back into a man in his prime. After Vulcan tosses them out of his realm, he reverts to an old codger.

It's an apt metaphor for watching Gilliam's films, which always make me feel like a child again. Would that real life could flow the way it does in "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen."

3.5 stars out of four

Hollywood doesn't prefer blonds

Let's play a game: Quick! Name a current male film sex symbol who is blond!

...

......

.........

Nothing?

Don't worry, you're not just drawing a blank: These days, Hollywood's notion of handsome invariably means dark.

(Tall is good, too, though movie stars tend to be shorter than you'd think. But that's another column.)

Alright, you've had another minute -- still haven't come up with a towheaded star who sets the girls' (and some boys') hearts aflutter?

That's because there aren't any.

And no, we're not counting Robert Redford or Steve McQueen. I said a modern movie star, meaning their heyday is 2010, not 1970.

If you guessed Brad Pitt: Thanks for playing, but you lose. Although he's worn blond wigs or dye jobs for the occasional role ("Troy," "Legends of the Fall") the reigning embodiment of male beauty has a naturally brown head. (Check the eyebrows, they don't lie.)

As a film critic and owner of flaxen vestigial fur, I've long been dismayed by the dearth of actors who are considered sexy and also happen to look like me. (Well, except with good cheekbones and a strong chin.)

On a primal level, it's discomfiting that celluloid depictions of the panoply of human diversity leave me feeling marginalized. One thinks: Where am I? Don't I matter?

It may sound strange for an Aryan type to claim solidarity with African-Americans and other minorities who have long cried foul about movies reflecting them poorly, or not at all.

But with year after year of George Clooneys, Will Smiths, Johnny Depps, Tom Cruises and other pigment-blessed stars taking turns dominating the box office, I'm starting to wonder if Hollywood and the movie-going public have it in for blonds.

(Quick aside: The proper usage is to say "blonde" for women and "blond" for men, it being one of the few English terms that has feminine and masculine forms. Although many people, including me, mistakenly use the extra "e" for everybody.)

I'd almost grown resigned to the fact that when any given actor is held up as the new model of desirability, he would always have brown or black hair. But in recent years, things have grown even worse.

On the rare occasions when blond men do appear in popular films, they fall into one of three highly stereotyped roles: The goofball, the gay pal, or the psycho.

Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell typify the first pigeonhole: Guys who butter their bread with comedy, dancing for their dinner by playing the fool. To put it bluntly: We are not meant to take them seriously.

It's notable that Wilson, despite being quite good-looking in dude-ish way, has never played a romantic lead.

When it comes time to portray a (usually minor) character as effeminate, it's no coincidence that he's usually fair-haired. Look to the backgrounds and throwaway jokes of mainstream movies, and you'll see a lot of blond guys expressing over-the-top gay mannerisms.

The last category is the scariest (literally).

When sadistic killers occupy the screen, respected actors like Stanley Tucci ("The Lovely Bones") and Robin Williams ("One Hour Photo") love to trade in their dark locks for pale ones.

Sometimes it seems like the nastier the murderer, the blonder he gets: Look at the rash of nearly colorless killers such as the twin assassins in "The Matrix Reloaded," Jake Busey's religious bomber in "Contact" or Paul Bettany's killer monk from "The Da Vinci Code."

Although there have been some rugged midcentury blonds to grace film -- McQueen, Alan Ladd, Van Johnson -- almost from the dawn of cinema, dark hair has been associated with manliness and virility. Blonds have been relegated to the role of "the other."

The bias may have some basis in nascent film technology: Black-and-white cinema had a high amount of contrast in its early decades, so blond hair would tend to get washed out against lighter backgrounds. Similarly, those with pale eyebrows have a harder time projecting their facial expressions, especially to the back of the theater.

And the brutal truth is that, when it comes to commonly held standards of male attractiveness, most women just prefer dark hair.

Consider this from someone calling themselves Hairwatcher in an online chat: "It's something about the way the dark hair frames the face, giving it more presence. The eyebrows being dark also make them more pronounced, which emphasizes the eyes and all of this makes the face look stronger."

So the sad (for us blonds) conclusion may be that Hollywood is simply giving audiences what they want.

Still, that doesn't completely explain the way yellowheads are routinely dissed and dismissed at the movies.

Recently, brown-haired actor Chris Evans was cast in the lead role for 2011's "Captain America" movie, despite the comic book hero's alter-ego Steve Rogers always being drawn with platinum locks. This is old hat for Evans, who previously turned another blond super-hero, Johnny Storm -- aka The Human Torch -- to the dark side in the "Fantastic Four" flicks.

For me, the final straw was when they turned on Ken.

Or rather, when they turned Ken.

In its eagerly awaited film "Toy Story 3" hitting theaters May 18, the animation geniuses at Pixar have taken the inexplicable step of transforming the Ken doll -- y'know, of Barbie & Ken? -- into a brunette.

Despite decades of iconic blondness -- with that distinctive molded plastic hairstyle that looked like it'd been combed with a push broom -- Ken has gone to a coppery brown for his big screen debut.

Of course, Ken has always been a bit swishy, with a thing for brightly-hued scarves that was positively metrosexual before they even invented that term.

Oh, and he lacks genitalia. That fits, since Hollywood treats blond humans with a penis as if they didn't have one.

Video Review: "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"

The "Night at the Museum" movies are the epitome of everything wrong with modern filmmaking. They have lots of whiz-bang special effects, two or three humorous moments, and no heart or brains.

Night museum guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) survived a job inside a museum where all the exhibits come to life. Since then, he's moved on to a successful career as a TV product pitchman -- which brings monetary benefits but not much fulfillment.

Meanwhile, the living exhibits (which turn inanimate during daytime) are shipped off to storage at the Smithsonian museum complex, where the magic tablet brings all those exhibits to life, too.
Unfortunately, one of them is an Egyptian pharaoh (Hank Azaria) who wants to use the tablet to rule the world; he has recruited Ivan the Terrible, Al Capone and Napoleon as his henchman.

And Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) fleshes out a bomber jacket long enough to give Larry a hand, along with a few slaps and smooches.

There's a few clever jokes -- the Jonas Brothers as cupids is cute, and I liked the spoof of the slo-mo action sequences from "300" performed by 2-inch-tall Romans.

But mostly, it's goofy computer-generated mayhem without much point.

Video extras are quite ample. Separate commentary tracks are provided by director Shawn Levy and screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. There's a 19-minute making-of documentary that touches on most aspects of filmmaking, though it's a lot of glad-handing.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also comes with a gag reel of outtakes, about a dozen deleted/alternate scenes, and more. I particularly liked the "Phinding Pharaoh" featurette, which has screen tests of Azaria trying out various accents for his character -- including a Southern one -- before settling on what he dubs a Boris Karloff impression.

A limited edition "Monkey Mischief" disc adds games and featurettes about the monkey star and his handler.

The combo pack also includes a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 1.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Old Dogs"

"Old Dogs" is a veritable Travoltafest.

John Travolta stars in the family-friendly comedy, playing Robin Williams' best pal and business partner. And his wife Kelly Preston and their daughter Ella Bleu Travolta both have leading roles in the flick.

Maybe this is the real meaning of "family film."

The movie is in some ways a sequel to "Wild Hogs," a similar movie from a couple of years ago that was a surprise box office hit, which like this one was directed by Walt Becker (the screenplay is by David Diamond and David Weissman).

It's an opportunity for Travolta to poke fun at his sex symbol status, playing a middle-aged guy who mixes up his medications and gets mistaken for a grandpa. I can't think of too many big stars willing to be the happy target of jokes about aging.

In an interesting twist, Preston and Ella Bleu don't play Travolta's significant other and daughter, but Williams'.

Williams and Travolta are Dan and Charlie, two lifelong chums and partners in a sports marketing firm. Charlie is the outgoing lothario, while Dan is the straitlaced business guy. They're about to land the deal of a lifetime with a huge Japanese company, when Dan gets a bolt from the blue.

Seven years earlier, Charlie took Dan to Miami for a night of whirlwind partying to help him get over his divorce, during which he met and married Vicki (Preston). They soon parted ways, but after looking to spark the embers of romance, Dan learns that there was a pair of complications from their brief nuptials: Fraternal twins Zach (Conner Rayburn) and Emily (Ella Bleu).

Vicki has to serve a two-week prison term resulting from some activist protesting, so Dan gets stuck with the kids. Of course, he insists that Charlie share in the fun since it was his meddling that got him stuck in this situation.

The movie is geared toward children, so the humor is rather broad and doofy. Parents may grow a little restless, but the kids will likely enjoy the antics -- such as Charlie's incessantly urinating dog, and junior partner Seth Green getting nuzzled by a giant gorilla.

The most enjoyable parts are the riffs on getting old, such as when the two men get their pills mixed up, with some wacky side effects that would tend to alarm the folks at the FDA. Travolta even subjects himself to an incontinence joke that scores some laughs.

"Old Dogs" is nothing new, but as family comedies go -- both intended for families and starring one -- it's a reasonably good time.

2.5 stars

Review: "Shrink"

In general, I'm not a big fan of ensemble films. "Shrink" is the rare exception that works on nearly every level.

The problem with movies boasting a large number of characters with layered, intersecting storylines is that they tend to be inconsistent. Some characters and plots are engaging and interesting, while others are not. We end up squirming in our seat, impatient to get back to the stuff we like.

Take "Babel," a high-profile ensemble drama from 2006. I found the parts about Cate Blanchette and Brad Pitt as tourists in the Middle East exceedingly tiresome, while the sections about the shepherd father and his two sons were powerful.

When they're done right, which is rarely -- Robert Altman's "Nashville" and Lawrence Kasdan's "Grand Canyon" come to mind -- ensemble films remind us that we're interconnected, and evoke a sense of community and place.

For "Shrink," that place is Hollywood, and the community is a collection of movie actors, agents and wannabes loosely connected through their association with a psychiatrist, played by Kevin Spacey. Henry Carter, the "shrink to the stars," is best described as the main character, although it's more of a first-among-equals type of thing.

There's also Jeremy (Mark Webber), a hipster screenwriter who is a parking valet by day. And Jemma (Keke Palmer), a high school student who ditches class to watch movies. And Kate Amberson (Saffron Burrows), a big star who's taken a few years off to raise a family, and finding that her options are limited for "older" actresses (she's perhaps 37).

Some of the characters appear to be based on real-life figures. Shamus (Jack Huston) is a young Irish actor with brooding dark looks who immediately strikes it big before he's really had a chance to find himself as an actor, or as a person, and falls into the drugs-and-partying crowd.

Sound familiar?

Others represent archetypes, such as Robin Williams as an aging star who needs help resisting temptations of the flesh, and Dallas Roberts as a super-agent who's too busy making deals and threatening adversaries to bother with actually reading scripts or watching movies.

The agent-as-cannibal thing has been done before (including by Spacey, in "Swimming with Sharks"), but Roberts adds notes of humanity and dark humor that lets us accept his character as a real person, rather than a cartoonish caricature.

Carter is despondent over the suicide of his wife, and spends his days smoking copious amounts of pot in between therapy sessions and promoting his book, ironically titled "Happiness." Carter is clearly in a descending spiral, and gets confronted in an intervention by his friends, but he angrily defends his need to grieve.

Screenwriter Thomas Moffett and director Jonas Pate -- both relative newcomers -- twist these characters together in a web of associations that's improbable, but feels authentic. Some of them are nice people, some are decidedly not, but hanging around with each of them feels like time well spent.

3.5 stars