The Sea (2002)

July 9, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Iceland, Norway, Theatrical

Hafið
*/****
starring Gunnar Eyjólfsson, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Hélène de Fougerolles, Kristbjörg Kjeld
screenplay by Baltasar Kormákur, based on the play by Olafur Haukur Símonarson
directed by Baltasar Kormákur

by Walter Chaw A family melodrama that’s a little like Chekhov but a lot more like Telemundo, Baltasar Kormákur’s The Sea (Hafið) takes the bare bones of “King Lear” and fashions from them the sort of bleeding hair-render that runs roughshod through the Altman/Bergman canon without the benefit of genius. Its use of foreground, of mannered close-ups and overlapping dialogue, of old men journaling their lives at the end of their lives, all feel at odds with the film’s weightless, familiar tale of an old man shackled to the ideal of a better era in opposition with subsequent generations of useless, snivelling bastard children trying to feed off the corpse of said better era, the irony of that Icelandic tradition including a sort of culturally institutionalized rape (the contention of which I find to be not merely shockingly reductive, but deeply suspect besides) mentioned but left unexamined for the most part. The problems of The Sea aren’t restricted to this reliance on reckless ascriptions of cultural archetype for irony or poignancy (an Ayn Rand-ian predilection for staging hypothetical, unwinnable arguments in their extreme), extending to issues as problematic as a script (adapted from a Olafur Haukur Símonarson play by Kormákur, a sometime-actor who appeared as the mad scientist in Hal Hartley’s No Such Thing) that is as repetitive in regards to dialogue as to scenario.

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)

July 1, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, France, Theatrical, UK

**/****
screenplay by John Logan
directed by Patrick Gilmore & Tim Johnson

by Walter Chaw Making almost no impression at all, DreamWorks’ latest animated flick is a lot like their last animated flick, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron: an endlessly-reproducible light romantic cartoon heavy on the derring-do and gender slapstick, and light on anything that could possibly be construed as memorable. The most noteworthy thing about the picture, in fact, is that it exposes the surprising quickness with which DreamWorks’ has become that which it most disdains: Disney redux–its sixth animated feature satisfying the maxim of joining what can’t be beaten and getting as entrenched and boring as Treasure Planet in the process. As soon as it’s declared that the quest of the film is for the “Book of Peace,” it’s already past time to let the eye-rolling commence.

Ten (2002) + Lilya 4-Ever (2002)

June 27, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, France, Iran, Sweden

Dah
**½/****
starring Mania Akbari, Amin Maher, Kamran Adl, Roya Arabashi
written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Lilja 4-Ever
***/****
starring Oksana Akinshina, Artyom Bogucharsky, Lyubov Agapova, Liliya Shinkaryova
written and directed by Lukas Moodysson

by Walter Chaw The plight of women in oppressive and/or emerging cultures, on film, is a slipstream metaphor for the travails of all the citizenry of that place and, from there, the existential struggle of modern man–a heavy burden, to be sure, and one that forever teeters on the precipice of trite to the one side, affected to the other. (With “condescending” the great beast, crouched and ready to pounce.) Women are too often grail repositories of fear and loathing–indicator species, much like children in film, to be examined for hints of what’s toxic in the spirit of the time. That two foreign films by male directors find their way to the United States in fast company of one another, dealing with the plight of women (all women, all society, all the world) in ways frank and raw, is arguably not so much coincidence, then, as a synchronicity that, no matter their relative success, represents a sharp spur and a whip to the collective flank.

Tycoon (2002); Under the Skin of the City (2001); Stone Reader (2003)

June 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Documentary, Drama, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, Theatrical

Oligarkh
Tycoon: A New Russian
*½/****
starring Vladimir Mashkov, Mariya Mironova, Levani Outchaneichvili, Aleksandr Baluyev
screenplay by Aleksandr Borodyansky, Pavel Lungin, Yuli Dubov, based on Dubov’s novel Bolshaya pajka
directed by Pavel Lungin

Zir-e poost-e shahr
Under the City’s Skin
***/****
starring Golab Adineh, Mohammad Reza Forutan, Baran Kosari, Ebrahin Sheibani
screenplay by Rakhshan Bani Etemad, Farid Mostafavi
directed by Rakhshan Bani Etemad

STONE READER
*/****
directed by Mark Moskowitz

by Walter Chaw The collapse of oppressive regimes is a double-edged sword for a country’s film industry. Official censors are out of work, but they take their government’s sponsorship of the film industry with them. Entertaining a stream of strange bedfellows from the United States and France, the Russian cinema in the age of Perestroika struggled to find a balance between artistry and commerce–the same instinct that promoted the creation of underground trades in fake Levi’s spawned, too, a steadily gathering horde of cheap knock-off films designed, like their Yankee brothers, for minimal but satisfactory fiscal return. Departing quickly from the early optimism of pictures like Alexander Sokurov’s Days of Eclipse and Pavel Lungin’s Taxi Blues, the “Russian New Wave” (led like the French nouvelle vague by a cadre of critics) has expressed itself lately through cultural remakes of classics of world (including early Russian) cinema. The S. Dobrotvorsky-scripted Nicotine, an interesting take on Godard’s Breathless, is the best of the cultural doppelgängers; Lungin’s Tycoon is among the worst.

Man on the Train (2002); Chaos (2001); And Now… Ladies and Gentlemen… (2002); The Son (2002)

June 5, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Drama, France, Germany, Japan, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

L’Homme du train
***/****
starring Jean Rochefort, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-François Stévenin, Charlie Nelson
screenplay by Claude Klotz
directed by Patrice Leconte

CHAOS
*/****
starring Catherine Frot, Vincent Lindon, Rachida Brakni, Line Renaud
written and directed by Coline Serreau

AND NOW… LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…
***½/****
starring Jeremy Irons, Patricia Kaas, Thierry Lhermitte, Alessandra Martines
screenplay by Claude Lelouch, Pierre Leroux & Pierre Uytterhoeven
directed by Claude Lelouch

Le fils
****/****
starring Olivier Gourmet, Morgan Marinne, Isabella Soupart, Nassim Hassaïni
written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne

by Walter Chaw After a brief period where French cinema seemed exclusively interested in the ugliness and violence festering in its anti-Semitic margins, what with pictures as variegated as Baise-moi, Trouble Every Day, My Wife is an Actress, and indeed, Gasper Noé’s sensationalistic Irréversible (which demonstrates a continuing fascination with a tumultuous French cinema in extremis), the old guard begins to reassert itself with its own tales of the underbelly of life displacing the façade of the comfortable upper class. Patrice Leconte’s new film Man on the Train (L’Homme du train) is reserved and slight while Chaos by Coline Serreau (who was born the same year as Leconte, as it happens) tries to soften the cruelty of much of modern French cinema by overlaying it with a patina of feminist uplift and misplaced social satire. Films like Rohmer’s The Lady and the Duke and Godard’s In Praise of Love attempt to draw a line between the nouvelle and the digital age (and Chaos is shot in ugly DV), and pictures like Rivette’s wonderful Va Savoir and now Claude Lelouch’s And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen… act as surveys and auto-critique of the medium itself. With these three pictures, the meta-critical instinct–something of a hallmark of French culture in general and cinema in particular–finds a new voice in, ironically, its older generation of directors. Somewhat apart from all of that is the Dardenne Brothers’ The Son (Le Fils), which is on its own stylistically but looks thematically for common ground in its own tale of obsession and reconciliation.

Winged Migration (2001)

May 30, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Theatrical

**/****
directed by Jacques Perrin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The birds are coming, my friends, and you best take shelter before they bore you into a stupor. Not even Hitchcock himself made avian life seem as pervasive a threat as Jacques Perrin does in Winged Migration–though instead of being an active physical menace, it simply has the power to take your money and drive you to sleep or insanity. Alas, despite some super cinematography and generally good intentions, this record of birds sitting around and taking off gets very old very fast, for want of anything beyond an exclamation of, “Look at the pretty birdie!” There is, of course, an audience (nature enthusiasts without an intellectual bent, for starters, as well as those who would mistake impersonal, “professional” photography for art) that will not only gobble every shallow morsel of this film, but also think it a cultural advance.

The Italian Job (2003)

May 29, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, France, Germany, Italy, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**½/****
starring Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, Seth Green
screenplay by Donna Powers & Wayne Powers, based on the screenplay by Troy Kennedy Martin
directed by F. Gary Gray

by Walter Chaw The Italian Job may be the very definition of a perfunctory remake. There’s no arguing with its professionalism and, at times, it threatens to hear the music, but when its best moments are those in which Donald Sutherland–in Venice again after 1973’s Don’t Look Now–summons up the horrific ghosts of Nicolas Roeg films past, the picture reveals itself to be inspired only by movies that were first, and better. In that spirit, among the recent crop of heist films, The Italian Job is better than Frank Oz’s The Score and David Mamet’s Heist, but not nearly so good as James Foley’s Confidence. It finds itself at the mercy of the rhythms and images of pictures it seeks to ape, drumming out in the end an often flat, frequently limp product that seems to know, to its credit, the difference between “style” and “seizure.” But with a cast that is either predictably flat (Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Jason Statham) or convinced they’re too good for the movie (Ed Norton; only Seth Green seems like he’s having genuine fun), The Italian Job is just a prettified reflection glancing off the surface of a deep well.

The Pianist (2002) [Limited Soundtrack Edition] – DVD

May 26, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Music, Palme d'Or Winner, Poland, UK, War

***/**** Image C Sound A Extras B+
starring Adrien Brody, Daniel Caltagirone, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay
screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman
directed by Roman Polanski

by Walter Chaw It comes as little surprise that when the Nazis begin to build a wall around the Warsaw ghetto is also when Roman Polanski’s Holocaust drama The Pianist becomes distinctive, as the director is at his best bound by the endlessly symbolic edifices and crannies of architecture. The story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) and his survival under the auspices of the Polish underground, serendipity, and fear is almost anti-heroic, its central figure passive like the most memorable of Polanski’s heroes (Rosemary, Carol Ledoux, Trelkovsky, even Jake Gittes after a fashion), and its indignities more intimate than the grand tapestry of the Holocaust generally allows. The loss of Szpilman’s entire family to The Final Solution is less wrenching than the line that precedes it as Szpilman says to his sister, “I wish I knew you better,” and less difficult again as the musician’s inability to play a piano he’s imprisoned with in a tenement flat while in hiding. Far from insensitive, The Pianist is actually intensely humanist, focused as it is on the little indignities that bring a man from his comfortable environment to the furtive edge of capricious extinction.

Respiro (2002)

May 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Italy, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Valeria Golino, Vincenzo Amato, Francesco Casisa, Veronica D’Agostino
written and directed by Emanuele Crialese

by Walter Chaw Emanuele Crialese’s Respiro has the rhythm and the pulse of the southern Italian island on which it was filmed. It is all of breathtaking panoramas and impossible colours, and in the middle of it is Greek-Italian actress Valeria Golino evoking, in a career-defining performance, late countrywoman Gina Lollobrigida. (Golino would have been a far better choice than Penelope Cruz in the remake of Fanfan la Tulipe, currently not-wowing audiences at Cannes.) A film by turns savage and languid, for the first part it seems as though the film, with its clashing bands of shirtless youths, will be a reworking of The War, but then it becomes more a metaphor for grief and redemption in a feral environment fettered for too long by men and their illusions of cities.

The Shape of Things (2003)

May 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Romance, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol, Fred Weller
screenplay by Neil LaBute, based on his play
directed by Neil LaBute

by Walter Chaw Early in Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, a character mistakes “Medea” for “My Fair Lady”. Not an easy thing to do, for sure, it’s something that points to both LaBute’s instinct to proselytize and to his unpleasant air of smug intellectual superiority. LaBute’s films are science projects involved in the dissection of sexual politics; at their best, they illustrate the harshest salvos lobbed in the gender war, and at their worst, they serve mainly to confirm that LaBute has become so disdainful of his audience that first Possession and now The Shape of Things most resemble listless beasts over-burdened with broad symbol, churlishness, and portentous allusion. LaBute wants to hit you over the head and get away with something at the same time, his existential rage cooling in direct proportion to the self-pitying belief that no one understands him.

Love Liza (2002) – DVD

April 27, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Germany

***½/**** Image B Sound A- Commentary B+
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Jack Kehler, Sarah Koskoff
screenplay by Gordy Hoffman
directed by Todd Louiso

by Walter Chaw Philip Seymour Hoffman is Dante and the slings and arrows of mendacity are his Virgil, chasing him through the inferno of his day-to-day. A remarkable actor at his frequent best when deserted by a lover, Hoffman in Love Liza is Wilson Joel, a man whose wife has just killed herself and left a sealed letter behind. It becomes his albatross, toted around unexamined, as Wilson descends on a spiral of juvenile addiction (gasoline huffing) and avoidance. He sleeps on the floor outside his bedroom and does his best to dodge his mother-in-law (Kathy Bates)–hiding the sharp odour of his addiction behind the lie of becoming a radio-controlled airplane pilot.

Hot Docs ’03: Echelon: The Secret Power

April 23, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Espionage, Film Festivals, France, Hot Docs
Échelon, le pouvoir secret***/****directed by David Korn-Brzoza by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This is a sometimes gripping, sometimes irritating film about international espionage and those who direct it. An information-gathering organization with tentacles in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, "Echelon" long ago abandoned the post-WWII directives that created it and started gathering intelligence on private citizens through highly questionable means. Now that the electronic and information ages are upon us, Echelon, the NSA, and various satellite organizations can listen in on your telephone calls and whatever other electronic transmissions you might be making; the Anglo-American coalition uses…

Levity (2003)

April 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter, Kirsten Dunst
written and directed by Ed Solomon

Levityby Walter Chaw Sort of Frank Capra without the subtlety, Levity is a relentlessly moralizing film that finds Billy Bob Thornton in his second role (Monster’s Ball) in three years as a man responsible for another man’s death who proceeds to woo a close relation of said victim as a means of atonement. The greatest irony of a film about forgiveness is that it’s destined to inspire the opposite in most viewers, but with a professionally underachieving cast of good actors (Morgan Freeman is now into his eighth year of not trying very hard), a master cinematographer (Roger Deakins), and the sort of story that attracts said actors like atoning moths to the mainstream arthouse flame, the picture is not altogether useless.

A Man Apart (2003) + The Man Without a Past (2003)

April 4, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Finland, France, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

A MAN APART
**/****
starring Vin Diesel, Larenz Tate, Steve Eastin, Timothy Olyphant
screenplay by Christian Gudegast & Paul Scheuring
directed by F. Gary Gray

Mies vailla menneisyyttä
***½/****
starring Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Annikki Tähti, Juhani Niemelä
written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Manapartwithoutapastby Walter Chaw The one an absurdist sketch, the other just absurd, both Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past and F. Gary Gray’s A Man Apart use violence as a catalyst for existential introspection, but while Gray’s emetic excess deadens with its Death Wish-cum-The New Centurions wish-fulfillment fantasy, Kaurismäki’s gentle fable finds grace amongst society’s victims. Gifting their respective stars each with a hospital scene and subsequent resurrection and new lease on life, the two protagonists are paired with a lady love once back on the street–Kaurismäki’s hero with a Salvation Army matron (Kati Outinen), Gray’s with a ridiculously loyal partner (Larenz Tate) who discards his role as conscience to become an extension of a revenge plot that’s made more ludicrous with a heaping dose of morality and a Lethal Weapon graveside penance.

The Core (2003)

March 28, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Disaster Movie, France, Germany, Italy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**½/****
starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci
screenplay by Cooper Layne and John Rogers
directed by Jon Amiel

by Walter Chaw Jon Amiel’s poorly-timed disaster throwback The Core is a by-the-numbers affair that features the sort of special effects mayhem that folks will reference when terrorists blow-up the Acropolis–perhaps explaining in part why this bombastic summer film is being rushed into release in the late-winter doldrums: better to get it in movieplexes before it has to be delayed for a few months. But with unfortunate mentions of the Al Jazeera news agency and a botched shuttle landing that is exceedingly uncomfortable given its proximity to NASA’s recent tragedy, it could just be that The Core is a bad idea for any time, and releasing it when no one is likely to see it is just a cut-your-losses sort of thing. The Core is probably betting that people are more fatigued by the Riefenstahl-ian “embedded” live coverage of our troops in action than by their over-familiarity with this kind of Armageddon/Deep Impact/Poseidon Adventure falderal, when the truth is that it’s possible to be tired of both.

City of God (2002)

March 14, 2003Posted inAuthors: Walter Chaw, Brazil, Coming of Age, Crime, Drama, France, Theatrical

Cidade de Deus
**/****
starring Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge, Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora
screenplay by Bráulio Mantovani, based on the novel by Paulo Lins
directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund

by Walter Chaw I’m uncomfortable with Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s City of God–not for its brutality, but for the slick cinematic treatment of that brutality as it manifests itself through the harsh realities of Brazil’s favelas (“slums”). Social Darwinist and serio-mythic in equal queasy measure, the picture is more influenced by Tarantino than Meirelles’s background in commercial and video filmmaking, finding itself trying to balance its sizzle with social conscience before choosing to remove itself as a strict adaptation of Paulo Lins’s book Cidade de Deus. That being said, Meirelles does a magnificent job of parcelling out–of marketing–the key touchstones in the history of a slum seething with violence. The result is a film that suggests what it might be like if Guy Ritchie helmed The Pianist–kinetically intriguing and technically proficient, but deeply troubling for its pop sensibility.

Irreversible (2002)

March 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, France, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

Irréversible
**½/****
starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Philippe Nahon
written and directed by Gaspar Noé

“You know what? Time destroys all things.”

Irreversibleby Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. That’s the opening line of dialogue in Irréversible, meaning it comes after the closing titles, which scroll down the screen backwards and are followed by back-to-front names in block letters. Each word lands with a percussive thud (“Bellucci!” “Noé!”) echoed in the sound produced by a fire extinguisher in one of the two scenes everybody’s talking about: Director Gaspar Noé’s secondary conceit (the primary we’ll discuss momentarily) is a kind of reverse foreshadowing, with disturbing noises and gestures recontextualized elsewhere, invoking the standby “Hindsight is 20/20.” A film that appeals to the pessimist in us, Irréversible may make you think of Memento, but where Memento was about destiny, Irréversible is cynicially hopeful (if there is such a thing), illustrating the human impulse to look to the past for happy endings–Bogey’s bogus reassurance that “we’ll always have Paris.”

The Lady Killer of Rome (1961) + The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971)

February 21, 2003Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, France, Italy, Palme d'Or Winner, Theatrical, Thriller

L’Assassino
The Assassin
**½/****
starring Marcello Mastroianni, Micheline Presle, Cristina Gaioni, Salvo Randone
screenplay by Pasquale Festa Campanile & Massimo Franciosa & Tonino Guerra & Elio Petri
directed by Elio Petri

La Classe operaia va in paradiso
Lulu the Tool
***½/****
starring Mietta Albertini, Giovanni Bignamini, Flavio Bucci, Donato Castellaneta
screenplay by Elio Petri & Ugo Pirro
directed by Elio Petri

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover What a difference a decade makes: watching Elio Petri’s first film (1961’s The Lady Killer of Rome (L’Assassino)) and one of his most honoured (1971’s The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La Classe operaia va in paradiso)) reveals just how the march of history can change a director from distinguished craftsman to agent provocateur. One marvels at how the Left-inflected debut, made before the upheavals of the late-Sixties shook up film aesthetics, goes down easy and comfortably, while the Left-committed later film, made in the miasma after those upheavals failed, grabs the viewer by the lapels and shakes him or her until he or she cries uncle. And one is grateful that that sea change happened: it’s The Working Class Goes to Heaven which looks best from the present vantage point, because it makes its points with a desperate urgency that the earlier film, however pointed it might seem, can’t hope to match.

Stargate (1994) [Ultimate Edition – Director’s Cut] – DVD

February 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, France, Sci-Fi, Time Travel

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Viveca Lindfors
screenplay by Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Bill Chambers Spawning a television show and solidifying the Hollywood career of German director Roland Emmerich, 1994’s Stargate was the last movie to get the memo that Abyss-ian water walls and morphing technology no longer evoked World’s Fair awe. These special effects are merely the epitome of Stargate‘s second-hand wonder; part of the film’s value as a curiosity piece is its New York street-merchant vibe: like peddlers of the Rolux watch or Parda handbag, Emmerich and co-producer/co-writer Dean Devlin are selling us an approximation of a blockbuster by a licensed hitmaker, and we excuse them the same way we allow for the smudgy print of carbon copies or the colour bleed on VHS dubs. It must be a human impulse to absolve a facsimile of its absence of novelty.

About a Boy (2002) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Romance, UK

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz, Isabel Brook
screenplay by Peter Hedges and Chris Weitz & Paul Weitz, based on the novel by Nick Hornby
directed by Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz

by Walter Chaw Will Freeman (Hugh Grant) is a philanderer and a playboy. Independently wealthy because of residuals from his father’s authorship of an inexplicably successful Christmas tune, he spends his feckless days in carefully scheduled thirty-minute “units.” (One unit for taking a bath; three for lunch.) Finally feeling a void in the middle of his rootless life at the tender age of thirty-eight, Will–after a scheme to feign single-parentage backfires roughly–finds himself involved with a mordant thirteen-year-old named Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) and Marcus’s suicidally-depressed mother, Fiona (Toni Collette). Rachel Weisz plays the girl too good for the pre-evolution rapscallion, her late appearance ultimately best described as the plot point that drives act three.