Oscar season has begun. From the Toronto International Film Festival on, studios and independents begin wheeling out their glamour and prestige pictures- in other words, movies they think are actually good. But after expanding the best picture nominee list to ten, summer fare is actually likely now to sneak onto the list- (see Inception). So what else released earlier in the year is likely to snag a nomination? Well done American family dramas are so few and far between that when a good one is released, critics fall over themselves praising it. Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right was probably the most well received film of its kind since 2000's Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me (coincidentally also starring Mark Ruffalo, essentially playing the same part.)
On its face, The Kids are All Right seems like one of the preachy, mildly subversive, post-modern takes on the traditional family that the art-house crowd loves to love – (see Juno). A professional lesbian couple, played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore raise two ideal teenage children in a picturesque California suburb. But there is no preaching of liberal tolerance, or caricatures of critical conservative hate-mongers. In fact, other than being gay, Moore and Bening exemplify the traditional 1950s family values you'd find in an average Frank Capra movie; one partner works, while the other that stays at home with the kids, spending the workday pruning the flowers around their white picket fence. Nevertheless they have their problems. Bening, the breadwinner begins to resent Moore's flakiness, while Moore's gradually becomes annoyed with Bening's condescension and constant micromanaging.
But on the whole the family are content, and pretty functional. That is until the children begin seeking their biological father. Played by Mark Ruffalo, a sperm donor who made his contribution to the family 20 years prior for 70 dollars a pop, Ruffalo embodies an easy going masculine charm that makes it easy to understand why his newly discovered children take such a shine to him. It also becomes clear that despite the best efforts of their two moms, their lives were severely lacking a male presence, even one as imperfect as Ruffalo.
If I've made the film seem kind of perfunctory in its plot points it's only because the genius of Cholodenko's film lies not in its story, but in the subtle interactions of its characters. These are intelligent, funny, and most importantly, sensitive people who despite their flaws are entirely empathetic. No one is a villain, and no one is certainly a hero. Characters make mistakes, some mild, some awful, but just like in real life, everyone's actions have some justification behind them without ever being justifiable. By the end of the movie you feel like you know each character from the inside out, a rare feat in American movies these days, especially one starring mainstream stars like Moore, Bening, and Ruffalo.
Winter's Bone, a critical darling from this year's Sundance is almost certain to garner a best actress nomination for its lead, the teenage Jennifer Lawrence. Set in the impoverished Ozarks, Lawrence plays a 17 year-old forced to care for her invalid mother, and adolescent siblings. After her father, a crystal meth dealer jumps bail, the bonds people threaten to take the one possession Lawrence and her family still possess, their modest home. As a result, Lawrence is forced to embark on a journey to locate her father, whom for various reasons does not want to be found.
Despite the fact that everyone in their little community are practically related by blood, few seem willing to help her in her quest. Even her sympathetic uncle played by John Hawkes (the dad from Me, You, and Everyone You Know) is a constant threat of danger. Like the Kids are All Right, Winter's Bone goes over similar territory as other films of its kind; the foreboding backwoods landscape, and threatening hillbillies. But what sets it apart, besides its completely convincing lead performance, is how it lets you into a world of people bound by code, and what happens when one asks the wrong questions.
By the end of Winter's Bone, you feel like you know you've experienced life in Lawrence's world, which is all you can really ask for from a movie.
